What a difference a coat of paint makes

Royce and I returned from Hilton Head to find a new look for our ugly house. When we left it sorta (this is an old picture…lots of leaves and we have replaced some bushes) looked like this:

And when we returned after 5 days of golfing and beach bumming it looked like this:

How is that for a face-lift? Even more surprising we weren’t expecting it…we had picked out paint colors but our painter-man said that he would start onthe deck while we were gone. Neither of us were expecting to return to such a sexy home. Although I’m a bid sad I didn’t get the worthy ‘before’ pictures I wanted. Makes me wonder why the previous owners didn’t bother to do this since they had such a hard time selling it in the first place…would have given it way more curb appeal and honestly its not *that* expensive considering other home improvement costs we have incurred. Consider us the lucky winners of the ugly duckling award. Our neighbors are also ecstatic…it really couldn’t get much worse though.

Our new LeafGuard gutters are in too…had a few gutter-less days but thankfully no rain so I got some sleep. The big test will come with the next rain storm…stay tuned.

We are also moving slowly on the kitchen. We had contractor Dave and his designer over on Friday to go over our wish list. Something I’ve got to tackle this weekend is my cooktop + double oven vs. free standing range debate. Our current set up is a cooktop + double oven and I really like it…but Dave suggests we blow the double ovens to give us more space. But once you have 2 ovens I’ve heard it is really hard to go back…even our State Farm agent, who we met with today, warned me to not downsize…she did and she isn’t proud of her choice. So this weekend I’ve got some research to do…I’m looking for my dream range…a 36-40" baby with at least 1 decently sized oven and 1 oven big enough for side dishes…Oh and it needs to be less than a fortune!